Olympia
Olympia was the original homeworld of the Primarch Perturabo and his Iron Warriors Traitor Legion before they turned to Chaos during the Horus Heresy. Olympia was an Imperial Civilised World characterised by a culture of city-states before it was destroyed following the Heresy. It was the actions of the Iron Warriors themselves that made the world uninhabitable before they fled it during the Imperial assault on Olympia that was part of the Loyalist vengeance campaigns of the Great Scouring. Judged to be afflicted with an irrevocable Chaos taint, the Imperium has left Olympia a barren Dead World. History Origins Olympia was an ancient human-colonised planet in the marches of the Ultima Segmentum on the opposing side of the galactic core from Terra, and was one of a number of worlds in a region heavily settled, it is believed, in the latter days of the Dark Age of Technology. Having survived the Age of Strife largely intact, scientific lore and industry on Olympia had regressed to a fractured but largely pre-atomic industrial level, but there remained stagnant as a sophisticated feudal culture had developed. Although relatively rich in organics and with a plethora of lithic mineral forms, much of its fissile materials and easily available conductive metals had been strip-mined in antiquity and removed offworld, serving to enforce a bar on Olympia's progression technologically. Further complicating matters was the almost unbroken mountainous terrain which dominated Olympia's land masses and made large scale urbanisation and agriculture impossible. These unique conditions bred an equally singular culture which evolved into a diverse patchwork of hundreds of independent city-states and client satrapies. These dominated and fought endlessly over the most verdant mountain valleys, sizable plateaus and richest vales in a shifting web of power and warfare. A secular, opportunistic culture, given to the pursuit of wealth, security and dominance, the Olympian arts of war evolved towards a sublime mastery of fortress-building, siege craft and stone masonry. On Olympia, power was the ability to not only take resources but to defend them. The mountainous terrain, abundance of high quality stone and the artisanship to put it to use made the fashioning of elaborate keeps to guard vital passes and citadels to defend stockpiles of wealth and foodstuffs essential. These artificer-wrought defences were of murderous cunning and impregnable strength, and soon came to be the hallmark and measure of the greatest of the city-states and their rulers; the twelve most powerful which were dubbed by ancient tradition the "Tyrants of Olympia." Warfare in this fractious realm was a complex game of cunning political subterfuge and assassinations mixed with all-out assault. Olympia's incessant wars were fought between often mercenary armies of professional sellsword grenadiers and storm-gunners, and sieges were carried out by steel-plated creeper-tanks, clanking steam mortars and hulking scout airships held aloft by volatile gasses. The warlords who commanded Olympia's battles owed such loyalty as they possessed to the purses of the wealthiest of the Tyrants, individuals whose rule was carried by right of possession, bribery, preferment, statecraft and fear. It was to the court of one of these Tyrants, Dammekos of the city-state of Lochos, that the young Perturabo was brought after his arrival on that world. The Lord of Iron 's sketch of Perturabo, the Lord of Iron, Primarch of the Iron Warriors Legion; illustration taken from Carpinus' Speculum Historiale.]] When the Primarchs were scattered across the galaxy from the Emperor's gene-laboratory beneath the Himalazian (Himalayan) Mountains on Terra by the Chaos Gods, Perturabo's gestation capsule came to rest on Olympia. The full details of this early period in Perturabo's life remain somewhat mysterious, with the only extant accounts given to Imperial Iterators years later, and ever distrusted even then as coloured by Olympia's endemic intrigues. The most reliable information points to Perturabo as having been recovered from the rocky wilds outside Lochos by the ruling Tyrant Dammekos' guards. They had been pursuing tales of a strange and wondrous boy wandering between outlying minor settlements and outcast communities -- the boy plying his way both as a fighter for hire and as an artisan of phenomenal talent despite his great youth, staying in no one place for any length of time before moving on. Tales of the boy had reached the court of the city-state of Lochos and Dammekos, a shrewd and cunning ruler, had been intrigued enough to despatch his retainers to find if any truth was in them and if so, how indeed they could be turned to his advantage. Perturabo was discovered climbing the mountains below the walls of Lochos. The city guards, having realised this was no ordinary child, brought him before Dammekos. On seeing the strange boy in the flesh, Dammekos put him to the test, witnessing his ability to defeat warriors twice his size and many times his age in combat on the one hand, and the boy's ability to solve any puzzle put to him by the Tyrant's own scholars on the other. Dammekos was intrigued enough to offer the boy a place in his court. Between the boy and the Tyrant a bargain was struck; fealty, loyalty and service on the boy's part and on that of the Tyrant, patronage and protection, and access to the finest military training and scholarship the Tyrant's resources could confer upon him. Later accounts differ of what came after. Many paint the boy as a prodigy of staggering and indeed inhuman ability, who spent his life in an unending regime of solitary training, and devouring whatever learning and lore was set before him, or he could dig out himself to study. Others mark veiled references to a child who was both cold and devious, for the rapidly growing boy never fully accepted his lot, never truly trusted the Olympians and refused to return any affection given him by his adopted father. Dammekos spent plenty of time with his new adopted son, but never received any affection in return. There was a mysterious explanation for Perturabo's inherent mistrust, unknown to anyone but himself. Upon reaching the summit after climbing the rain-slick cliff, the exhausted youth had peered towards the heavens and gazed upon a strange, nebulous stellar maelstrom erupting across a corner of the heavens. When he inquired of the Tyrant's guards whether they could see the strange phenomenon, the bewildered guards replied that they could not. For the rest of Perturabo's life, this maelstrom would continue to look down upon the Primarch; making him feel as if it judged and measured his worth and spied on his every movement. A life lived beneath its cold scrutiny made him brooding and loath to offer his trust, ever-watchful and aware of its baleful glare. It would be over two standard centuries later before he found a reason to venture into this strange star maelstrom's mercurial depths, a galactic phenomena whose name he would coin, a name that would one day strike fear into the hearts of all those that heard it. This stellar maelstrom, in truth a giant rift between realspace and the Immaterium, would one day be known as the Eye of Terror. Many Olympians saw the boy as a particularly cold and brooding child, though the fact that he was a genetically engineered superhuman who had been mysteriously thrown onto a far-off world with no idea of his origins or purpose was certainly not conducive to the development of a trusting nature. Despite his aloof demeanour, the adopted boy learned from the culture in which he found himself the arts of the siege, for Olympia's myriad warring city-states afforded plenty of opportunity to study both the theory and the practise of this highly specialised branch of warfare. Upon his age of majority, the foundling took a name for himself to be known all his adult life, but against custom he chose not to honour the family into which he had been taken by assuming one of the names of its venerated history as was expected. Instead he chose an ancient name that he had long favoured, a name that some claimed had been found in a forgotten text from before the fall of humanity -- a text written in a language only the boy in his precocious ability had succeeded in translating: Perturabo. What true meaning it held, he did not divulge. To war the young Perturabo now set himself, and in this he had much to work on. Dammekos was a powerful Tyrant and Lochos a powerful city-state, but he and his realm were beset by rivals and bitter vendettas on all sides, and having given an oath unbreakable, Dammekos' enemies were now Perturabo's. Granted first minor commands, the young Primarch ascended the ranks of his adopted house's armies at a frightening rate. Victory after victory followed under his command and his legend grew, as did the mercenaries and war-artisans, flocking to the banner of Dammekos in their lust for success and plunder. But more than mere success in battle did Perturabo bring to Lochos, and even from the beginning was his genius noted not simply for war, but also invention. Having absorbed with superhuman clarity the breadth and depth of Olympia's science and artisanship, he soon surpassed it on every level and from his chambers a constant stream of blueprints and discoveries sprung, encompassing everything from revolutionary new machines, to treatises on architecture and production methods, and even ground-breaking works on medicine and astronomy. But it was first and foremost by his advances in warfare that Perturabo's dark fame was bred and his legend as the "Hammer of Olympia" was born. New weapons, munitions and hitherto unimagined siege engines were all birthed at Perturabo's hand and, in a brief span of years, it was they and Perturabo's own generalship, now as the warlord to the Tyrant Dammekos, that made Lochos the most powerful and feared city-state on Olympia, with a hundred others underneath its heel, and countless more cowed into de facto submission to its rulers. Perturabo's score upon score of military victories brought no peace to Lochos, however, only dominance, and the growing threat of an enemy within, the assassin's blade and the poisoner's kiss. It is believed that a great many attempts were carried out upon the life of Lochos' "Lord of Iron" during this time, both by subjugated Tyrants reasoning that without Perturabo, Lochos' supremacy would crumble, and by those who to Perturabo's face called him family and friend, but who secretly held him in terror or jealous hatred. The Primarch, now full-grown, towered over them all both in stature and intellect, but cared little for the baubles and trappings of power, and nothing at all for the falsehood of the Tyrant's court. Aloof, prideful and justly wary of friend and enemy alike, Perturabo is depicted in the evidence of the time increasingly as a particularly bloody-handed warlord even by the standards of his world, to whom mercy was an alien concept, and who would meet any insult with murderous violence. The steel executioner's mask and the ancient Kaveathos heraldry warning death to the transgressor were Pertuabo's signs and seals, and promised savage punishment in repayment of failure by those beneath him, just as it promised death to his enemies. It is of note that despite the fact that should he have wished it, Perturabo could have overthrown his "master" Dammekos and displaced him as Tyrant of Lochos and its empire, he did not do so. The Primarch, it seems, would not break his word or his bargain willingly, and Dammekos, for all his vainglory and corruption was careful never to give him cause or excuse to do so. It is thought perhaps that true to his oath, Perturabo would have let the aging Dammekos die a natural death as he remained unprovoked, hastened by the Tyrant's own licentious excesses, before taking Lochos and then all of Olympia as his own in time. What he would have made of his world then can only be guessed at, for it was not to be, as a new star had been seen in the heavens -- the Emperor had finally come for His lost son. The Emperor Comes In time, the Emperor of Mankind arrived on Olympia as part of the Great Crusade and informed Perturabo of his true place in the wider galaxy. Such evidence that remains of the recovery of Perturabo and his installation in the forces of the Great Crusade indicates that the process occurred swiftly, and with immediate acceptance on Perturabo's part, in marked contrast to several other Primarchs. The Tyrant Dammekos was more than willing to bring Olympia into the Imperium's fold as its Imperial governor or "satrap", and the price of voluntarily releasing Perturabo from his service was but a small due to pay. Perturabo for his part, it is believed, had already reasoned out his true nature, at least in abstract, as an artificial, posthuman being, and indeed expected his creator to one day be revealed to him, even though the particulars no doubt remained a mystery until the Emperor Himself appeared in orbit with his fleet. After his rediscovery by the Imperium, the young Primarch was brought to Terra to learn from his father about his chosen destiny and to meet some of his posthuman brothers. He was ultimately given command of the Space Marine Legion created from his own genome, the IVth Legion he would rename the Iron Warriors, and took command of it as it pursued the campaigns of the Great Crusade. The Great Crusade After assuming the mantle of the Primarch of the IVth Legion, according to established practise, Perturabo was declared the ruling lord of the world on which he had been raised, de facto deposing his adopted father, though Dammekos remained as the satrap of the world in Perturabo's absence. The Iron Warriors Legion then began the process of inducting new recruits from the most able candidates amongst the people of Olympia, as was the custom for all of the Space Marine Legions once they were reunited with their Primarchs. Yet Dammekos, the Tyrant of Lochos and now the satrap of Olympia, was in no way satisfied with serving another, particularly his own former warlord. He spent the last few years of his life trying to marshal support to reclaim Olympia from the Imperium. He failed, but created an undercurrent of unrest on the world against Imperial rule that was to be harnessed many years later. Horus Heresy .]] As the tragic outbreak of the Horus Heresy grew closer, Perturabo had become consumed by bitterness. He believed that he and his Iron Warriors, who were often used by the Imperium as garrison forces or as siege-breakers, had not received the glory and recognition he believed to be their due. Even worse, a deep and vicious rivalry had sprung up between Perturabo and his brother Primarch Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists Legion, a rivalry that only increased Perturabo's sense of grievance. After Horus' corruption by Chaos, the Warmaster used Perturabo's intense resentment to fuel his growing anger at the Emperor and the Imperium itself. In this way, Horus hoped to sway his brooding brother to the side of his planned rebellion. Some have postulated that it was Horus who, time after time, engineered events and adjusted deployments to Perturabo and the Iron Warriors' detriment. For the Iron Warriors Legion the Horus Heresy came as the culmination of a series of reversals and fell tragedies that occurred in the final years of the Great Crusade. Foremost of these was the unexpected rebellion of Olympia against Imperial rule. With the death of Dammekos, the long-lived Tyrant of Lochos and the chosen Imperial satrap of Olympia, the duplicitous and viperous politics of Olympia finally burst into infighting and insurrection. The violence and division flared up worse than ever before because of the changes the Imperium had wrought on Olympia, and the discontent grew, due to generations of the planet's finest youth having been tithed for the IVth Legion, never to return. The shocking start of the rebellion struck at the heart of the Iron Warriors Legion and its master, and could not have come at a worse time, for the IVth Legion had been engaged in the almost single-handed suppression of a major infiltration of the infamous xenos species known as the Hrud during the Sak'trada Deeps Campaign. The fighting had lasted for over a standard year. All such actions against the Hrud had proved costly both in terms of lives and the sanity of those who fought such alien nightmares, and this campaign had been no exception. Perturabo and the IVth Legion, battered by the demands of the campaign, and enraged and embarrassed by the rebellion of their homeworld, returned to Olympia. Angry beyond measure, Perturabo presented the Olympian population with a simple choice: enact decimation, selecting 1 in every 10 of their own to be executed, or face complete extermination and enslavement if they refused. When the rebels refused to bend, Perturabo and the Iron Warriors brutally purged the world city by city, overrunning the fortresses he had personally built and sparing no one who stood against him. Some Iron Warriors also refused to take part in the carnage against their own people, and they too were ultimately struck down by their brother Astartes. By the time the massacre was over, five million Olympians had been killed and the rest put into vicious slavery to the Iron Warriors. Perturabo looked on at the remains of his homeworld in cold silence. Only once the great pyres were burning to cleanse the world of the heaps of corpses created by the IVth Legion's assault did Perturabo fully realise what he had done. The Iron Warriors were no longer the saviours of the Imperium; they had been destroying the alien Hrud one moment and yet, in the next, they were committing genocide against their own people. With the cooling of Olympia's mass funeral pyres had come the realisation that nothing the Lord of Iron could ever do from that moment on could ever atone for such a worldwide genocide. Perturabo believed that his father the Emperor would never forgive him so grievous a sin, but Horus not only forgave it, when he learned of what had happened on Olympia he lauded his brother's thoroughness and dedication to eliminating traitors to the Imperium. Horus swore Perturabo never to feel guilt over what he had done to Olympia, but that was an oath easier to make than to live by. This welcome absolution combined with Perturabo's own guilt and bitterness towards his treatment by the Imperium to lead the Lord of Iron to side with Horus in his plans to replace the Emperor on the throne of Terra. As such, when the Iron Warriors were ordered to help put down Horus' rebellion on Istvaan V, the Iron Warriors instead turned on their fellow Loyalists and joined the Traitors' cause at the Drop Site Massacre. Post-Heresy In the wake of the Traitors' defeat at the Siege of Terra, Perturabo and the surviving Iron Warriors returned to their strongholds and sought to defend the small stellar empire they had carved out based on Olympia, but there was no refuge from the retribution of the Loyalist Legions during the campaigns of the Great Scouring. The Imperial Fists supported the Ultramarines in a decade-long campaign to liberate the subjugated worlds from the control of the Traitor Legions. They discovered the Iron Warriors to be like a barbed hook that, once embedded into a victim, could only be removed with great risk of injuring the patient further. The Iron Warriors' Olympia garrison held out for two standard years from attacks by the Loyalist forces, eventually triggering their own missile stockpiles when defeat was unavoidable. These explosions left Olympia a blasted wasteland that, like the other Traitor Legion homeworlds, was declared Perdita by the Inquisition. After the fall of Olympia, Perturabo and the Iron Warriors retreated into the Eye of Terror with the other Traitor Legions and took a Daemon World for themselves called Medrengard. Sources *''Deathwatch: First Founding'' (RPG), pg. 92 *''Horus Heresy: Collected Visions'', pp. 70, 226 *''Index Astartes I'', "Bitter and Twisted - The Iron Warriors Space Marine Legion" pp. 32-36 *''The Horus Heresy - Book Three: Extermination'', pp. 53, 107-110, 119, 129 *''White Dwarf'' 274 (US), "Iron Within, Iron Without" *''White Dwarf'' 257 (AUS), "Index Astartes – Iron Warriors" *''Fulgrim'' (Novel) by Graham McNeill, pp. 327, 355 *''The First Heretic'' (Novel) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, pg. 320 *''Angel Exterminatus'' (Novel) by Graham McNeill, pp. 19, 37, 39, 54, 56-57, 118, 206, 238, 264-266 *''Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia'' (Novel) by Guy Haley, Chs. 7-11, 13–15 es:Olympia Category:O Category:Chaos Category:Chaos Space Marines Category:Dead World Category:Forbidden World Category:Planets Category:History Category:Imperial History Category:Imperial planets Category:Imperium Category:Iron Warriors Category:Space Marines Category:Space Marine Chapter Homeworld